Many posts have discussed volunteering and civic virtue.
Tocqueville’s concern about the government’s domestication of nonprofits would no doubt increase after learning how many of them rely on public funding from different levels of government (over and above the subsidy they get via the tax code). A recent Urban Institute survey found that “in 2022, 68 percent of nonprofits received government grants or contracts and 29 percent of nonprofits’ revenue came from government agencies.” In cities like New York, many nonprofits supporting individuals and families needing intensive social services have come to rely on government grants and contracts for most of their budgets. Tocqueville would be hard-pressed to regard these entities as associations forming democratic citizens. Rather, he would see them as vendors and appendages of the government that inexorably find themselves beholden to their paymasters.
Tocqueville’s doubts about nonprofits’ autonomy and ability to help shape citizens would spike further given the limited role that these organizations play in most Americans’ day-to-day lives. Today, full-time professionals and paid staff, not volunteers and concerned citizens, form the rank and file of most major nonprofits. What was once fittingly called the voluntary sector is now, for most of those who participate regularly in its activities, better described as their place of employment. Indeed, recent appeals by nonprofit sector advocates to government policymakers have come to place the primary emphasis not on the aggregate impact of nonprofits’ missions but rather on the size and economic importance of the nonprofit workforce — now nearly 10% of all private sector jobs in the country.
As Americans’ involvement with associations has diminished markedly, so, in turn, has the power of these associations to help form citizens capable of sustaining democracy in America. In “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam famously traced Americans’ declining demand for civic engagement in the second half of the 20th century — and the collapse of community it produced. The first quarter of this century has seen these patterns of civic disengagement continue to accelerate. The recent landmark report of the Generosity Commission, for example, highlighted how rates of everyday charitable giving have trended downward. Nearly two-thirds of American households donated to charity in 2008. By 2018, fewer than half did.
In “Diminished Democracy,” Theda Skocpol illuminated less familiar but equally important shifts and shortcomings in the supply of civil associations. She documented the steady demise, starting in the 1960s, of the national, federated, cross-class and volunteer-driven associations that had long structured Americans’ civic lives. A different set of associations arose in their stead — issue-driven advocacy and activist groups led by professional staff in Washington, D.C. In these entities, paid staff managed the work while the participation of ostensible “members,” i.e., those on mailing lists for fundraising solicitations, remained largely passive. These new advocacy groups did achieve some victories, but Skocpol concluded that “vital links in the nations’ associational life have frayed, and we need to find creative ways to repair those links if America is to avoid becoming a country of managers and manipulated spectators rather than a national community of fellow democratic citizens.”
